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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Verizon to curtail auto-delivery of white pages in Pa. in 2011

During a scene in the movie The Jerk, Steve Martin jumps around wildly yelling, “The new phone books are here!”

His character is thrilled to find himself listed on Page 73, convinced that things will really start to happen to him because millions of people read the phone book every day.

It’s as absurd a notion in 2010 as it was in 1979, when the movie came out, but for a different reason: The Internet has turned the paper phone book into the rotary-dial phone of our age.

Every day, I walk past a pile of more than 400 Philadelphia phone books - Verizon white pages and yellow pages - that were delivered to our offices in June and still sit across from the elevators. The mound may be a bit smaller since then, but not by much.

If Verizon Communications Inc. gets its way, that won’t happen in 2011. Having already gotten approval from New Jersey and Delaware regulators, Verizon intends to stop automatically delivering white pages to homes and businesses in Pennsylvania, too.

Verizon cites surveys by the Gallup Organization done for SuperMedia L.L.C., which publishes Verizon’s phone directories, that indicate the percentage of households using stand-alone residential white pages decreased from 25 percent in 2005 to 11 percent in 2008.

That’s a lot of unused and unloved phone books and a major reason Verizon is trying to encourage people to look up landline numbers online. Striking one more blow for the paperless society and smaller carbon footprints, Verizon also would dial up savings from lower printing and delivery costs.

The company will continue to deliver the advertising-driven yellow pages annually and unbidden, but would only provide residential white pages - in printed form or a CD-ROM version - to someone who wants them.

Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski said the phone company informed the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission of its plans in September. Unlike Delaware and New Jersey, Pennsylvania does not have regulations regarding the mandatory distribution of white pages, so Verizon did not need to seek a waiver, he said.

However, the PUC wasn’t so sure that Verizon should get an uncontested slam dunk and directed the phone company to send a copy of its letter to others for comment, including the state Office of Consumer Advocate and the Office of Small Business Advocate. All comments are due by Oct. 18 and replies to those comments by Oct. 28, according to the PUC.

From A to Z, I think the only reaction to Verizon’s plan should be: How soon can it stop sending out these doorstops?

Quotable

“The U.S. Government is a reluctant shareholder in private companies and has no interest in owning companies over the long term. This unusual role is an unfortunate consequence of the financial crisis and the recession.”

- U.S. Treasury Department, from the report “Troubled Asset Relief Program: Two Year Retrospective,” released Tuesday.
Posted by Mike Armstrong @ 11:06 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About Mike Armstrong
Mike Armstrong, a business editor and writer for nearly two decades, is the Inquirer's business columnist and PhillyInc blog editor. Contact Mike via e-mail or at 215-854-2980
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